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Erasing the Boundaries
From ACM Opinion

Erasing the Boundaries

Technology used to be so simple.

Are Supercomputers Worth Their Super Price Tags?
From ACM Opinion

Are Supercomputers Worth Their Super Price Tags?

"Why do we have to aim for the world's No. 1 — what's wrong with being the world's No. 2?" That short question about Japan's vaunted K supercomputer program has...

Google Knows Too Much About You
From ACM Opinion

Google Knows Too Much About You

If you use Google, and I know you do, you may have noticed a little banner popping up at the top of the page announcing: "We're changing our privacy policy and...

Five Reasons The Robo-Car Haters Are Wrong
From ACM Opinion

Five Reasons The Robo-Car Haters Are Wrong

The self-driving cars we’ve been promised since the dawn of the auto age are here.

From ACM Opinion

No Objections to Nano?

Some forms of biotechnology have become notoriously controversial. Genetic modification of crops, for example, altered the food supply in ways some consumers...

From ACM Opinion

Facebook Is Using You

Last week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion...

'a Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40
From ACM Opinion

'a Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40

The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece about the concept of a morality pill, a theoretical-but-apparently-not-implausible panacea for humankind's ethical...

From ACM Opinion

Welcome to the Desktop Degree

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in 1995 to be precise, a scholar named Eli Noam published an article in the prestigious journal Science under the titleElectronics...

From ACM Opinion

Privacy, Technology, and Law

Every day, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our email, Google searches...

From ACM Opinion

David Karp, Founder of Tumblr, on Realizing His Dream

David Karp, the founder of the blogging platform Tumblr, was 17 when he decided to cut the apron strings and move to Tokyo. With a smattering of Japanese and a...

From ACM Opinion

How to Tackle Cybersecurity

There is a right way and a wrong way to address cybersecurity.

Beyond Sopa
From ACM Opinion

Beyond Sopa

We welcomed the collapse this month of two flawed bills to prevent online piracy, bills that could have stifled speech and undermined Internet safety. But piracy...

From ACM Opinion

Confessions of an Iphone Data Hog

I'm not on the run yet. But I've been warned. AT&T doesn't like what I'm doing.

How Can the U.s. Seize a 'hong Kong Site' Like Megaupload?
From ACM Opinion

How Can the U.s. Seize a 'hong Kong Site' Like Megaupload?

The Megaupload takedown, and the arrest of its key employees, might seem to vindicate late 1990s worries about the Internet and jurisdiction. Does putting a site...

From ACM Opinion

Yes We Scan

Locked in our federal vaults is a tremendous storehouse of information that if digitized would form a core for our digital public libraries in America with huge...

From ACM Opinion

Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories

In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. 

From ACM Opinion

Android Design Chief Details Google's Mobile Future

By most measures, the Android platform is an enormous success. It dominates the smartphone space in terms of market share, with over a quarter of a billion currently...

From ACM Opinion

Why 2012, Despite Privacy Fears, Isn't Like Orwell's 1984

Last week was a remarkable one for the Web: A week that proved George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" incredibly prescient yet woefully incorrect.

What Have We Learned About Software Engineering?
From Communications of the ACM

What Have We Learned About Software Engineering?

Upon closer examination, everything old appears to be new again in the realm of software engineering.

Emotion and Security
From Communications of the ACM

Emotion and Security

Examining the role of human emotional response in making complex security-related decisions.
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